Website Design

A website is a window into how your organization is run. Users assume that if you cut corners on your website, you also cut corners with your products and services.

When users feel smart and sophisticated on your website, they tend to stick around. When users feel stupid, their blood pressure goes up, their heart rate increases, and they get a little hot under the collar. This visceral negative reaction begins to harm trust and brand perception almost immediately.

Print Design vs. Web Design

Everyone knows how to turn pages in a brochure. Clicking links on a website, however, can take nearly any form (depending on the whims of the designer).

While there is a surface similarity between print graphic design and website graphic design, website design is much closer to product or industrial design than print design.

There are many popular websites that are just plain ugly, but highly functional. There are very few popular websites that are beautiful but hard to use. In eCommerce the stakes are particularly high. eCommerce websites that are not highly usable go out of business in a matter of weeks.

For these reasons, usability should not be an afterthought in website design. Testing and fixing a website after it has been built is inefficient and expensive. It is also unlikely to produce the best results.

The benefits of planning usability into your project from the start are:

Use the feedback to create new requirements, and begin major design improvements (system iteration).

Remember, evaluation occurs at every stage of the process to keep the goals of the project and the users’ needs in focus. And if it comes down to a choice, don’t sacrifice usability; reduce the scope of the project instead.